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to fifteen or sixteen, according to degree of intimacy or
relationship; and people sometimes find it a nice point of et-
iquette to know the exact number which they ought to send.
Strange as it may appear, this attention is highly valued, and
its omission by those from whom it might be expected is
keenly felt. These tears were formerly stuck with adhesive
plaster to the cheeks of the bereaved, and were worn in pub-
lic for a few months after the death of a relative; they were
then banished to the hat or bonnet, and are now no longer
worn.
The birth of a child is looked upon as a painful subject
on which it is kinder not to touch: the illness of the moth-
er is carefully concealed until the necessity for signing the
birth-formula (of which hereafter) renders further secrecy
impossible, and for some months before the event the fam-
ily live in retirement, seeing very little company. When the
offence is over and done with, it is condoned by the com-
mon want of logic; for this merciful provision of nature,
this buffer against collisions, this friction which upsets our
calculations but without which existence would be intol-
erable, this crowning glory of human invention whereby
we can be blind and see at one and the same moment, this
blessed inconsistency, exists here as elsewhere; and though
the strictest writers on morality have maintained that it is
wicked for a woman to have children at all, inasmuch as it
is wrong to be out of health that good may come, yet the ne-
cessity of the case has caused a general feeling in favour of
passing over such events in silence, and of assuming their
non-existence except in such flagrant cases as force them-

1 Erewhon